43. The Deep Warren
The party sail away from the rapidly fading Moonlit Isles early in the morning, the Night Mother dead and delivered to the River King. ** They head to Glassy Four, the isle where they left their cat, Zaratan, before the fight. They see her curled up and asleep in the middle of a throng of deadly sea cats and opt to leave her where she is. ** Wilfred conjures his cat familiar, Munin, to replace Zaratan as the ship's cat of the Drunken Dragon. * They sail to Freetown, arriving at its leeward docks as the sun rose. ** Most of the group were exhausted. Aerendyl had grabbed most of the requisite four hours for him to recuperate on the way back to Freetown. ** Aerendyl and Cormorant head out into town, looking for diamonds the elf can use in a spell to hopefully rid Pyt of his lycanthropic curse. Pyt gives Aerendyl 500gp worth of assorted gemstones to hopefully trade for the diamonds. ** The rest of the party remains on the boat in the dock, keen to rest after the night they'd had. ** Wilfred went a paid a sleeping man to dock the ship, unaware that such an act was entirely unnecessary in Freetown. At least he haggled the guy down from 20 to 15gp. * Aerendyl and Cormorant ask around, and find out that since the party had last been in Freetown a large group of goblins had set up a makeshift market on beach running to the horn of the island. ** The pair head there and see a lot of trade and activity going on, despite the early hours. One hundred or so goblins are running about, swapping various pieces of loot from their haul for all manner of essentials in large quantities - food of any kind, alcohol, oil, rope, cloth, fabrics, etc. ** There's a sleek goblin vessel docked in the waters just offshore. It looks to be a far superior vessel than the cumbersome goblin junkers they'd seen up to now. ** The pair hear some commotion amidst the stalls. They head there to see one goblin, prone, being mercilessly headbutted by another who had mounted his fallen body. The assailant is a shirtless, lithe goblin, torso covered in a network of complex dark green tattooed lines. *** An old goblin with a hooked nose, draped in earthy-coloured cloths and sporting a stick near twice his height, eventually shouts, 'Gwyn, that's quite enough!' When the shirtless goblin continues his onslaught, the old goblin smacks four others standing around staring at the horrific scene, telling them to drag Gwyn off his victim. *** Others scramble to help the unconscious, unmoving goblin on the ground, his face just a mess of bloody gore. But they stop when Gwyn, still held by the four scared goblins that had manhandled him off, says they're to leave the man alone in a drawling voice. *** Gwyn gets the four goblins to release him and calls after the old goblin, Glyndwr. *** Nobody dares move to help the unconscious goblin. ** In the wake of that display, Aerendyl and Cormorant go about trying to trade for some diamonds. They're eventually met by a suited goblin named Alwn, who agrees to trade at a rate of 3-to-1, since the goblins don't have much use for the gemstones Aerendyl is offering - they're trying to get rid of their own, after all. They trade three of Pyt's gems for enough diamonds to conduct Aerendyl's spell once, and a little goblin grinds them up into powder in exchange for 2sp from Cormorant. ** Cormorant asks Alwn why nobody is going to help the dying goblin on the floor, and is told that none here would dare disobey the work of a venom man. ** Cormorant learns that the injured goblin is named Gareth, and he wants to heal him despite the words of warning from Alwn. After a little bit of double speak, the suited goblin says that he and his wouldn't be against the idea of an outsider helping the poor guy on the ground - he punctuates the point by casually sliding back one of the gemstones Aerendyl had just handed over. ** The pair work as quickly as they can, with Aerendyl healing the worst of the external wounds with his magic while Cormorant does what he can for the internal haemorrhaging. Still, it takes them long enough that some of the worried onlookers start muttering, and at least one of them reports the happenings to Gwyn. ** Aerendyl and Cormorant leave the makeshift market quickly after that, but Gwyn calls after them when they reach the open beach. The three men stare each other down, Cormorant and Gwyn exchanging pleasantries about the morning with tension thick in the air. When the old pirate asks if there'll be anything else, Gwyn responds that he only came to get the measure of the men. The goblin stands in place and watches the pair the entire time they walk away. ** They head back to the Drunken Dragon and Cormorant immediately goes to sleep. * The party all rest until the early afternoon, with Aerendyl and the never-sleeping Clwyd up on deck, keeping a casual watch. ** When everyone's awake, Cormorant tells the group about what happened at the market. Clwyd identifies a venom man from Cormorant's description, telling the party that they're 'mad cunts;' she says they build up resistance to various animal venom and toxins, eventually implanting venom sacks into their bodies. ** Aerendyl successfully cures Pyt of his lycanthropy through the use of a diamond-infused watery greater restoration spell. * With Clwyd keen to check out the goblins on the beach, Wilfred keen to see the venom man, and Pyt keen to find some food post lycanthropy, the trio head to the goblin market. ** With them conspicuously poking around, they're soon met by Alwn - who obviously handles difficult or idiosyncratic customers; basically anyone not swapping the normal things the goblins are after for the normal things they have on display. ** Alwn mistakes Clwyd for just another unknown goblin in his retinue, and tries to send her back to work. She doesn't correct him and instead starts antagonising the guy. ** Switching between polite salesman in Common and irate boss in Goblin, Alwn tries and fails to handle Clwyd. ** It all reaches a head when Clwyd alludes to the idea that Madog the Inferno will be dead soon. Alwn, remaining calm, requests she claify that she's threatening the Inferno and those that have followed him to the new promised land, the island of scrap. ** When she does so, Alwn stalks away, ready to inform Gwyn and Glyndwr, until Pyt casts modify memory on him, making him think that Wilfred and Pyt had arrived and then had an argument with a small child that was with them, making sure there was no mention of the name Clwyd in the new memory. ** They decide to leave in a hurry after that, with the duo mad at Clwyd for her needless antagonism there - Wilfred in particular is upset he didn't get to see the venom man. ** As they're going, Clwyd takes a moment to look over the metal ship offshore. She recognises it as one of the vessels Madog is famous for, not a junker but a scorcher, paddle-less in design and as fast as a sailing ship despite being made of metal. * The party gather up, plan a little, and opt to rest for one more day before taking the fight to June the Maiden. * So it is, on the third night of the full moon, the party head towards the unnamed Glassy Isle where they know June's quickling servant awaits. ** They stop on a glassy isle before the quickling's one comes over the horizon. ** Pyt polymorphs into a flying snake and Aerendyl wildshapes into a spider, then climbs on snake-Pyt's back for a ride. ** The animal duo island hop from unnamed glassy isle to unnamed glassy isle, eventually coming to the quickling's island. ** They see it, a quickling with teal-coloured hair, mutilating a dead gull. The animal duo dash in for the attack. ** The exchange is fast and furious: snake-Pyt bites the little whippet; then it shanks him three times, dropping his polymorphy, before making to dash away; then Pyt knocks it out with a conk from the hilt of his rapier. ** They hogtie the quickling and tell the others to come to the island through the mental link of Wilfred's telepathic bond spell. * Everyone arrives, and the group have to wait until nightfall and moonrise anyway, so they opt to question the quickling when it eventually regains consciousness. ** Pyt easily deceives the violent little shit, saying they'll untie him if he answers their questions. At first the quickling is compliant, but when Pyt asks for info on June the Maiden, it refuses to talk. ** Aerendyl uses detect thoughts to aid in the interrogation. The quickling's thoughts move at a mind-numbing pace, and its anti-interrogation technique is mostly to think of the words 'don't let it slip' about ten thousand times a minute. ** Aerendyl probes deeper into the creature's mind with the spell, and learns a great deal: the three quicklings that serve this coven are all siblings, all named for their hair, and this one, Teal, is the only male and the youngest; the creature is unquestionably loyal to June at the time being, and as such is unable to answer questions that might compromise her; his job is to watch the horizon for trouble, and also to report to June every morning, telling her what's happening up here; and that June's chambers are at the end of her warren, along with her 'guard dog' (the thought being accompanied by the image of many large, writhing, snapping snakes. Additionally, Teal has the water breathing spell cast on him at that very moment. ** With the info gathered, Pyt instructs Jolene to stay here on the island and keep watch over the quickling. If he wakes up, she's to sting him, non-lethally, until he passes out again. She almost tricks Pyt into letting her kill the thing, but he sees through her double speak. All the same, she's very happy to be left alone on the island, and she takes to resting against a palm tree. * The wait for the quickling to regain consciousness took about four hours, so they still have an hour or so to wait until they can begin their assault under the light of the full moon and the River King's protection. ** They do some last minute prep. Aerendyl asks Cormorant and Wilfred for a drop of their blood each, saying that with it, in the event something were to happen to one of them, he might be able to bring them back. He doesn't clarify any more than that. ** The group weaves a cocktail of protection and utility spells around themselves, Aerendyl transforms into a giant blue octopus, and the time comes. ** They take the plunge. * It's a long swim, down and down, to get to June's lair. First comes the lava tubes, which wind and twist and are filled with the Weird Magic that means none who don't know the route shall ever find June's home. But the River King had shown them the way, and so they swim. After 45 minutes, the barren rocky lava tubes begin to flush with coral and then with fishes, crustaceans, and all other manner of underwater life that has no right to be thriving in such a sunless location - Weird Magic, man. * First the group encounter a huge snake skeleton, a bone guardian, that watches the entrance of the lair proper. It had been gifted with some of June's spellcasting, but Wilfred was able to counterspell any attempt it gave and the group soon made quick work of the thing. They concluded that it had not been the particularly powerful snake minion they'd been warned about. * Travelling through the winding, coral-lined tubes, the party came to a sprawling junction where a thick forest of kelp was growing. When they started pushing through it, they were attacked by seaweed blights, creatures that caused the kelp around them to twist and knot and tie down all who weren't strong enough to break the bonds. Pyt becometh hulking crab and starts snipping and crushing the blights. Aerendyl, in octopus form, is easily able to slip around the restraining plant bonds, and so too is Wilfred thanks to the magic Aerendyl had cast on him. The party make short work of the three blights that were attacking them. * They explore down the first few of the sprawling pathways, finding dead ends, more kelp, and at one point, two large crabs locked in a snipping match that crab-Pyt observed for a moment before scurrying along. * The party soon have to take a moment for Wilfred to recast telepathic bond, since it's been an hour since they took the dive. Aerendyl's freedom of movement spell also runs out on the gnome, but is not yet recast, meaning the group can only move at the crawling pace of Wilfred's swimming. * Down another passageway, the group sees a big patch of muck and dirt covering a lot of the corals directly in their path. Wilfred recognises words being spoken Terran, the primordial language of elemental earth, from the muck. It's a group of ten mud mephiti, all saying 'this mud's shit' and just complaining about a whole bunch of stuff. When Wilfred starts talking to them, they ask for him to give them some nice stuff. He knows these creatures are slow-witted and quick to take offence, so Wilfred just opts to throw 30 gold into their midst, sending them splashing and diving in their thick viscous muck to fight over the coins. The party walk past. * The path ahead forks and is overgrown with more kelp. Crab-Pyt starts snipping it in sheets and the group make their way through. They're eventually ambushed by a greater seaweed blight, more powerful that the previous ones, and capable of speaking Elvish. It tells them they're not the first to presume to sneak into the mistress's lair and they shan't be the last. But when the giant crab and the giant octopus both have the blight caught in grapples, it realises that it's time is up and opts to do as much as it can for its master, attacking Wilfred as much as it can before it is killed. * From the fork junction, the party head up the left path. The water starts getting hotter and the coral begins to thin out. ** Soon its uncomfortably hot and the lava tubes are barren rock once more. Three paths lay before the party: left, right, and straight on. ** They head straight on, eventually coming to an area filled with scalding steam that blocked all view of what lay beyond - a lava vent must be open ahead of them. ** They briefly think about forcing their way through, but decide to double back and take what was originally the left path to them on arrival in this area. ** Down this route, they encounter a salamander, an elemental fire snake. The ocean water is hissing and steaming off him in massive columns of rising, bubbling steam, just as it does when Cormorant activates the hellfire flames of his sword down here. The salamander is so clearly not a creature of the deep ocean, but here the flame snake was. It swims at them fast, spitting guttural Ignan words that nobody understands, ready to lash out with a superheated spear and its writhing snake tail. However, Pyt's crab form had worn off and so he could cast spells once more. He used blindness on it. Then Clwyd hit the thing with synaptic static. After that, it was missing most of its attacks and the group made pretty short work of it. Wilfred turned Pyt into a hulking crab again during this fight. ** The party conclude that this wasn't the powerful snake minion either. ** The salamander wore a ring of swimming on its finger, which Wilfred takes for himself - getting a burn from the creature's heated body in the process. Since the creature was so large, Wilfred wears the ring as an armband. ** The party poke around the area a bit, but it's a dead end. The salamander had apparently been trying to open more lava vents. ** The group go up the final path, the one that had been to the right. Up here, they encounter a giant crayfish that was waiting in ambush for some unsuspecting prey - which they were not, thanks to Aerendyl's keen eyes. It's a fairly short fight once octopus-Aerendyl gets the creature restrained in his tentacles. ** Ahead, they only find another dead end. * The group have to go back to the kelp junction where the path forked. This time they take the route going right. It brings them to a crossroads. They go left first and quickly come to a dead end. After this they head right, and the path snakes a bit, getting narrower and narrower until crab-Pyt can't fit any further. The party opt to head up the final path from the crossroads rather than waste the remaining time on the polymorphed Pyt right away. * The path straight across on the crossroads leads to light, revealing the beauty of the coral network's colour for the first time. The area is filled with glowing jellyfish. The party take great care to swim slowly and avoid touching the things, except for the hulking crab whose carapace is unaffected by such things. * They travel for a long time, with the tube widening as they go. Eventually, the path splits off to the right and they follow it into a long open-ish area. On the ground amidst the corals, the group see a massive flail snail just making its way along. Clwyd knows their shells are worth a lot of money, but the rest of the group don't think this is the time or the place to start killing such a benign thing that's currently minding its own business. They go back to the main jellyfish area and keep moving. * After a short while, the path forks again. They head right and come to a dead end, spotting nothing of note in the area (despite a DM-prompted perception check). They go down the left path and after more swimming, they reach the end of the jellyfish and return to the darkness. There's a path ahead of them and one to the right. Turning right, they quickly come to a t-junction, with paths heading left and right. They opt to head left here (meaning they're going diagonally downwards from where they arrived; this junction effectively looks like the letter H, with the party having arrived at the top-right section and heading down the bottom-left one). * They swim for a time and eventually come to a massive, pitch-black, bowl-shaped chamber. Since they're on a time crunch, the group decides to forgo stealth and they soon encounter a monstrously large snake that spat deadly caustic venom. This was a tough fight, with a lot of the party taking big damage from the first venom spit, and Clwyd's synaptic static not working on the snake because its Intelligence was too low. However, Wilfred managed to hold a wall of force spell that he sprang up in front of the dumb beast just before it spat venom again, causing the thick goopy liquid to flood the water around the snake's head and deal the massive damage back on itself. The fight ends soon after that, and the group are now sure they've dealt with the powerful snake minion. * The group looks around the bowl room, finding a lot of snake detritus and not much else in their hurry. They learn that both the lower prongs from the H-shaped junction lead to this room, and so they go back and head up the top-left path. This brings them to another T-junction. They go right and eventually come to a dead end where they opt to short rest. As they swim back and go past the junction, heading down the other path, a swarm of violent little fish, nearly enough to fill the entire lava tube, blasts past and around them. Wilfred is the slowest of the group to react and gets assailed by a thousand tiny mouths, each with a hundred tiny teeth. They rip through his arcane ward and shred into his flesh before moving on. * Down this path, the coral eventually begins to give off a faint light. They turn a corner and soon hear the beautiful humming of a woman echoing off the lava tube's walls. Aerendyl puts pass without trace up and the group proceeds. The first turn they come to takes them to a room with with crystalline, geode-like chairs, which they leave alone. Then they take a path that they can see widens into a large chamber. * They peek inside the large chamber, where they see three of the snapping snake heads of a hydra worrying a large chunk of meat - no, not meat, but a dead humanoid - while the other two heads slept. They had not yet killed the powerful snake minion. * And in the distance, combing her hair, was an other-wordly beauty beyond words, half humanoid, half sea serpent: June the Maiden. Category:Part Four